The UK is one of the most popular destinations in Europe for immigrants, new figures from the European Union reveal. Our country is now home to 7.24 million foreign-born citizens, accounting for 11.6 percent of the total population.
Of those, 2.33 million are from other EU countries, and 4.9 million are from outside the EU. Only the geographically larger nations of France and Germany have higher numbers, with 7.28 million and 9.8 million respectively.
And critics say the real figures may be much higher than the count produced by the EU’s statistical arm Eurostat. Its analysis is based on research by Britain’s Office for National Statistics, which is notoriously unreliable because there is no guaranteed way of assessing the numbers of EU citizens living here.
Britain’s level of ‘net migration’ – the difference between immigration and emigration –is currently 250,000 a year.
The Tories have said they will cut that to below 100,000, but, after two years in office, they have actually slightly increased the totals of both net and gross immigration.
Net immigration is running high because nearly 600,000 people a year continue to come to live in Britain, but emigration has dropped sharply since the recession began.
[…]
